Edible Bamboo Shoots
by gfhdickinson
Cathy Isom takes you into a different gardening trip. She gives you tips about growing your own edible Bamboo. That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.
Growing Your Own Edible Bamboo
Bamboo is a fun, beautiful, and easy crop to grow. It’s also one of the most useful plants around, for building and privacy hedges, windbreaks, and food and crafts. There are nearly 1600 species of bamboo known across the world, and of that group, just over 100 are considered edible, meaning tender and tasty.
The trick to growing bamboo for food is choosing the appropriate species, ones that are regarded as delicious and suitable for the climate. And while size doesn’t determine edibility, it does affect the quantity of a harvest: larger shoots equal larger harvests.The parts that are edible are the young shoots that pop up from the ground. Bamboo shoots can be eaten right away, or they can be canned, pickled, or frozen for later use.
When prepared in a dish, bamboo gives a delicious savory taste and a refreshing crunchiness. Vegetarians highly treasure bamboo shoots because of their flavor and their texture.
I’m Cathy Isom…
Japanese Hosaki Menma
Image credit: Japanese Hosaki Menma/by DryPot [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0, CC BY 2.5 or CC BY-SA 3.0 ], from Wikimedia Commons